California native Jeribai Tascoe has worked in everything from interior design to product design to graphic design. He’s currently a product manager for a software company and a freelance designer who recently began purchasing and redesigning old homes.

What’s your greatest design influence?

I would say my greatest design influence is just life and traveling. Early on in my career, I was drawing and hand-sketching a lot of graffiti and street art. I loved seeing tags on trains and walls. I had a sketchbook where I would draw with pens, pencils and paint, and I would do these sick mini murals for kids. They would put them in their lockers or binders, so it all started from a tagging sort of thing. I’ve always loved using colors, so that’s really where I drew a lot of early inspiration.

Tell us about your own home. Do you find it difficult to design your own space?

I just moved before I came to the show. Our prior house was wonderful, a four-bedroom, three-bath. It was a nice size home. We completely remodeled the whole thing. I did a master bedroom suite from the ground up. We totally styled that, and that’s the reason I made it on the show. Now, the current home we live in is only five years old. It’s nice but it’s still kind of builder-grade. We’re still slowly, incrementally going through each room. Before I left I did the laundry room. My wife and I really got into stripes. She’s like “I love stripes! Let’s do stripes!” But design in our home is definitely collaborative, because we have a similar taste. When it comes to common spaces, we just negotiate on colors. We like to repurpose things, too.

How important is it to repurpose, and what satisfaction can people at home get from transforming pieces on their own?

I personally love to be hands-on with my projects. I’d rather do that than go to the store and buy something, because to me, it’s part of that creativity and it’s in my fibers. I personally get amazing satisfaction out of taking an old piece and repurposing it. People at home, once they do it, they’ll have the bug.